Chapter 15 · Nia's Old Debt

"Don't touch the shard." Calder caught Mara's wrist before her fingers reached the silver glass.

His grip locked around her hard enough to stop her, not hard enough to bruise. Not yet. The shard sat on Nia's workbench, flashing with the words that had crawled across it minutes ago.

MARA IS NEXT.

Mara looked from the shard to Calder's hand.

"Let go."

"No."

"That's cute. Try again."

"You heard it," he said. "The shard marked you. If you touch it, it may finish whatever it started."

"And if I don't touch it?"

Calder's jaw tightened. "Then I go in your place."

She yanked against him. He didn't move. His coat sleeve pulled tight over his forearm, and the heat of his palm ran straight up her arm. That should not have mattered. Not with the old market alarms shrieking behind the walls. Not with blood drying under his collar from the wound he'd taken for her.

It mattered anyway.

"You don't get to volunteer for my death," Mara snapped.

"I'm not volunteering. I'm correcting the problem."

"The problem is your ego."

"The problem is the bond."

Nia slammed a metal case shut behind them.